I received this chapbook as part of a grab-bag of books from Cemetery Dance, and gave it a quick read one morning. It’s about a bone creature who resurrects himself through a gruesome process involving mushrooms and four innocent people. The story is part of a larger group of works, which Moore explains in the foreword to the chapbook, and which feels necessary to understand the context of the story; otherwise, it’s a brutal read that doesn’t serve a lot of purpose.

The story is told well, and is intriguing enough for me to be curious about the other works, but I’m not going to seek them out right now. Moore also notes that the story is intended to give the bone creature a backstory to make it more than just an evil creature doing evil things, but I’m not sure he succeeded with it. He gives the creature a moment of compassion, but it’s twisted up into something darker, and it doesn’t provide any compassion or sympathy for the beast. It’s just a beast.

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"